Sad news reached us last night…. Death thou has had a noble harvest #civilwar150

August 2, 1862

Sad news reached us last night, sad news indeed, of the death of Mr Edmondston’s old friend Dr Tennant.  He was wounded but slightly it was thought at the battle on James Island before Charleston & was carried up to his young wife at Walterboro, to die of Erysipilis induced by his wound.  Poor fellow.  With domestic happiness just opening upon him, for he barely saw his infant son, his young wife, not two years married, looking forward to a happy country home, to be cut off thus suddenly and sadly is hard indeed.  I thank Thee O my God that my husband is still spared to me.

            Peace! Peace! Grant us Peace!  Dr Tennant was in Camden on a visit to Dr Salmond when Mr Edmondston carried me there a bride of a fortnight.  Little did I think when I opened the ball given us by Dr S with Dr T that both my host & my partner would fill bloody graves!  One died for his country, died for my freedom, died in the discharge of the highest duty man knows, the defence of his fireside.  He fell wounded in sight almost of St Michel’s spire, in sound of the chimes which had quickened his loitering foot when a schoolboy, in sight of his Mother’s grave, of his Grandfather’s pulpit.  Out on this cruel war which sows broadcast the blood of our best & noblest, gives it in exchange for the scum of Europe, the outcasts of the Northern cities.  Dr Tennant it was who first told us of the Secession of S C when in that misty raw December morning we met him on the W.  & Manchester road, he on his way to see the woman he afterward’s married, we to attend Papa’s golden wedding—eighteen short months ago & what changes we have seen!  Death thou has had a noble harvest since then!  Patrick is much cast down, as well we may be, poor fellow.  He has recently seen his domestic happiness, seen him with his young wife & child, and the thought of them saddens him greatly!

            Today came a letter from the Sec. of War telling Mr E that he was “requested to designate such unattached Companies as he thought could conveniently be assembled to complete a Battalion & then if the Gen Comdg, Maj Gen Hill, approves, the Department will organize the Batallion.”  It came like a thunder clap upon me for I had brought myself to suppose that nought would come of his application & that after a reasonable time of suspense & waiting the whole thing would fall to the ground & we be allowed to go on as usual.  Now it all depends upon the view that Maj Gen Hill will take of it & as he has heretofore expressed himself in the most friendly way & thought or seemed to think highly of Patrick’s Military qualifications, he may think it will conduce to the good of the service to have him in the field.  If so, then fare well to domestic happiness for a time.

            In the afternoon came brother on his way to Raleigh.  Was very busy getting up things to send to his children & to Sophia: Dresses to make her little one some clothes, Turnip seed, & nice things for the little ones.

            We attacked the enemy lying in James River yesterday morning about 2 A M, brought our heavy guns to bear upon their Gun boats.  Instantly every light was extinguished, & a terrible crashing & splashing heard on the river.  At Daylight not a boat was in sight; all had fled precipitately, & McClellan’s camp was observed to be in great commotion, but we had no means of ascertaining the amount of damage inflicted by us.  An accident to one of our guns killed one & wounded more of our men which were the only casualties on our side.  The orders issued by the Heads of the Army & the President are so infamous that I make a collection of them & paste them in the end of this book where they may hereafter be referred to—an infamous record which should die the face of Civilization with a crimson blush.

            The siege of Vicksburg has recommenced.  Nobly has she hitherto held out!  Pray God she may be enabled to continue.  They say that their canal is finished & that the first rise in the river will cut it out so deep that their gun boats will securely pass & avoid the batteries that frown from the heights of Vicksburg.  We maintain that it must be a failure & that time will prove it.  I hope we are right.

Source: Edmondston, Catherine Ann Devereux, 1823-1875, Journal of a Secesh Lady: The Diary of Catherine Ann Devereux Edmondston 1860-1866. Crabtree, Beth G and Patton, James W., (Raleigh, NC: North Carolina Division of Archives and History, 1979). http://nc-historical-publications.stores.yahoo.net/478.html

Read Full Post »

True is it that no war is so savage as a civil one! #civilwar150

July 30, 1862

The Sec of War still delays answering Mr E’s application to fill out his Battalion.  It is annoying on his own account & doubly so on that of Capt Reinhart, the Yanceyville Co., which was mustered into Edmondston’s Battalion & is encamped awaiting orders which seem indefinitely delayed.  Went yesterday to the Plantation with Mr E.  Very busy sowing turnips both there & here.  The seed are put in good order.  God grant the increase!

News by the mail indicates that McClellan having strengthened himself on the James by entrenchments is sending part of his men down the river, with what object it is not certainly known, but it would appear to join Pope at Fredericksburg, I suppose to try “On to Richmond” by another route.  Pope’s army are committing the most horrible excesses in the Valley and about Fredericksburg.  His order which I append is, I think, the most oppressive which has yet appeared.  To expatriate a whole country & then to treat as spies those whom the care of their families, the protection of all man holds dear, may cause to linger round their homesteads is cruelty which no despot yet has surpassed.  The atrocious order will not be believed in future times.  True is it that no war is so savage as a civil one!

A cartel for the exchange of prisoners has been signed, we having greatly the advantage in both numbers & rank.  The siege of Vicksburg has been, after weeks of Bombardment, for the present abandoned, the enemy admitting a defeat.  They have damaged the town to the amount of $80,000 to effect which they threw shells.  Our loss is thirty killed & wounded, theirs unknown.  Truly these Yankees are savage and unchristian enemies.  Even the sanctity of the grave is not respected by them!  The body of Gen A S Johnston was deposited temporarily, subject to the orders of his wife now in California, in the vault of Mayor Monro in New Orleans.  This they have sacrilegiously invaded, taken the coffin out & removed the outer case, with what object does not appear & this too by order of Butler.  Was ever such warfare waged by Christian before, a warfare upon women & dead bodies?  Cromwell’s was the last grave outraged by authority by the Anglo Saxon race & that has always been considered a blot upon Charles 2d’s administration & that the civilization of the 19th Century should now revive it seems incredible!

In Kentucky Morgan carries all before him.  He has even threatened Cincinnati & thrown the whole south of Ohio into a terrible panic.  In Cincinnati it was terrible & had he troops enough to protect his rear, he would have been able to shell it from Covington.

Source: Edmondston, Catherine Ann Devereux, 1823-1875, Journal of a Secesh Lady: The Diary of Catherine Ann Devereux Edmondston 1860-1866. Crabtree, Beth G and Patton, James W., (Raleigh, NC: North Carolina Division of Archives and History, 1979). http://nc-historical-publications.stores.yahoo.net/478.html

Read Full Post »

Catherine on 1862 slang – skedaddle, quiz, swivet, rennible #civilwar150

July 22, 1862

 

The mail yesterday brought Patrick letters from James to the effect that Gen Holmes has been transferred from this Department to the Trans Mississippi—just as Patrick had presented his credentials & Statement to him requesting to be placed in command of the Cav Companies in this State.  He seems unfortunate, but I am not inconsolable under it, as I see the hand of God in thus directing him.  Gen Holmes successor is to be Gen D H Hill, his old friend but some time must elapse before he could know enough of the Companies to be able to recommend the Sec to throw them into a Regt & in the mean time his Commission will expire.  So he has only to look to the result of his application to the Sec, which is but a faint hope; but as I said before I am content.

Walked with Patrick through the grove & orchard.  Had some trees cut out & must speedily mark more so as to give it a good thinning.  Found the apples on Woolman’s Harvest ripe & most beautiful, perfect in form and with an exquisite waxen look & what is better, as pleasant to the taste as beautiful to the eye.  Amused myself with my note book much to Patrick’s merriment.  He says not one fact I have recorded is of any practical use, but I boldly answer Mr Utilitarian that the amusement that compiling it affords me is use enough.  It keeps me from ennuie & rubs up my education, besides fostering the taste for Literature & Belles Lettre which with some persons flag as they grow old—may it never be so with me.

Looked out “swivet,” could only find it in the Provincial Dictionary where, quite in opposition to the sense in which I used it, it means “a deep sleep.”  So it is “slang,” & therefore Mrs Edmondston you owe your journal a humble apology for having used it, for tho’ it does not aspire to be “a well of pure English undefiled” yet it scorns modern innovations & slang disgusts it outright.  What is slang, however?  “Rennible” is in no dict that ever I could discover & yet it is a good old English word, crowded out of the language by more modern “fluent” altho they do not express exactly the same thing & tho obsolete still it is not “slang.”  Quiz was slang, but it has been adopted into good society & tho it has not yet found its way into the Dict, has not yet that certificate of right, yet no one would venture to accuse another of inelegance in its use.  But a little good sense & good taste I suppose determine the matter for every one.  This Yankee habit of coining new words when they have old ones which express their meaning perfectly is abominable.  “Skedaddle” is their elegant word to express a precipitate retreat.  They make the “rebels skedaddle” very often in the imagination and sometimes they “skedaddle” themselves.  I hope that this will be one point of difference between us in future.  They may be as careless in their language as they choose; we, I hope, will preserve our noble gift with jealous care & make our spoken conform to our written language.

Vicksburg still holds out whilst we are making advances in Tennessee, even beating up their quarters at the gates ofNashville.  Andy Johnson, a wretch, has resigned & gone to Washington after oppressing his native state as much as he could & heaping up for himself a future of infamy.

McClellan lies quietly on the James awaiting reinforcements.  His army is represented as being prostrated with sickness.  Burnside with the most of his force has gone to him & the rumour goes that he is to march up the South side of James River, take Petersburg, & then co operate with McClellan in an attack on Drury’s Bluff to open the River to the Gun boats when all three, McClellan, Burnside, and the Gun boats, will advance on Richmond.  Conscripts are being hurried on to fill up our broken ranks & we are preparing to give them a warm reception on their next “On to Richmond” movement.

Pope is at the head of a Column which menaces the Valley, but JacksonI hope will soon manage him.  Huger is relieved of his command and placed at the head of the Ordnance Department—a place he is fitted for & would that he had occupied it instead of the passes of the Chickahominy.  Had he been alert every thing goes to prove that the whole northern army would have fallen into our hands.

A cartel for the exchange of prisoners has been concluded, but we hear nothing more of the demand for Butler.  Neither do we of the present said to have been sent by the merchants of Liverpool, so I fear it was a false statement.  Truth pure maiden where art Thou?  Certainly not abroad in this Country!

Letters from father.  He has left Kittrell’s & is in Raleigh on his way to the Catawba White Sulphur—in some respects better, in others not so well.

Source: Edmondston, Catherine Ann Devereux, 1823-1875, Journal of a Secesh Lady: The Diary of Catherine Ann Devereux Edmondston 1860-1866. Crabtree, Beth G and Patton, James W., (Raleigh, NC: North Carolina Division of Archives and History, 1979). http://nc-historical-publications.stores.yahoo.net/478.html

Read Full Post »

Every drop of blood in my veins boils as I think of the insult to which she is exposed #cw150

July 18, 1862

A great triumph in the Mississippi—the Steam Ram Arkansas, which was being built at Memphis, but which was towed in an unfinished state when Memphis was evacuated up theYazoo River, has been quietly finished.  Suddenly she emerged from the mouth of the Yazoo and fell upon the fleet before Vicksburg.  She sank two, crippled two, blew up one, drove one ashore, & damaged others & in spite of a shower of shell & ball more terrific than can be conseived of, enteredVicksburg in triumph and now lies under our guns.  She would have effected more but her smoke stack, the only damage she received, was so riddled with shot that she lost steam.  She lost 9 killed & 11 wounded by a shell which entered a port hole which most imprudently was opened for air.  The defence beforeVicksburgis most heroic.  The town has been bombarded for days.  Scarcely a house remains which is not perforated with shot or shell.  The liquid fire shells carry ruin & destruction where ever they burst, yet the town still holds out.  The shelling commenced without notice at day light in the morning when the city was full of women & children.  Would that the like resolution had been showed at New Orleans.  How different would be its fate now.

I append the orders relating to Mrs Phillips, for in the space of a few years it will be difficult to convince one self even of the petty tyranny & monstrous injustice, the unrestrained temper & cruelty of the man—well is he called “Butler the Beast.”  Poor woman!  How I sympathize with her under this foul wrong.  Every drop of blood in my veins boils as I think of the insult to which she is exposed, the horrible outrage which can with impunity be penetrated upon her, for has not Butler himself given his brutal soldiery license for anything?  Her poor parents, Mr and Mrs Levy, how little did they think that such sorrow would fall upon them in their old age. * I should like to hear Phoebe speak of it; how she would scorch them!  I must think there is some private pique, some personal feeling which he thus abuses his power to revenge.  Her tongue is a sharp one, her influence in society large, & she may have put some slight upon Butler or his wife which he now has it in hands to avenge.  The Infamous Judge Jeffrieds himself was but little worse & when one considers the different ages in which they lived, not so bad as this blot on the nineteenth Century—“this canker worm”—“this Butler”!

Grant is emulating him at Memphis, for he has issued an order ordering all families who have any member of it, directly or indirectly, in the service of the Confederate Government, all state or municipal officers, to leave the city in five days.  Unheard of tyranny!  No wonder Vicksburg holds out with such examples before them.

We succeed in annoying the transports & even the Gun boats in James River.  On Monday we disabled their Mail boat, running her aground.  Mr Lincoln has been to pay McClellan a visit, see for himself the condition of the Army, & will it be believed that he the President of a great nation actually with his suite undressed and “took a swim and a bath” in the waters of the Potomac on their way back to Washington?  Thank God!  he is not our President!  We have no part or lot in him, the vulgar flat boats man!  With strange inconsistency the Northern papers claim both the triumph of a victory & the sympathy of being out numbered after fighting with desperate valor before Richmond.

*More information on Phillips: http://southernmemoriesandupdates.com/2011/louisiana/southern-belle-hauled-to-prison-for-laughing-at-union-funeral/

Source: Edmondston, Catherine Ann Devereux, 1823-1875, Journal of a Secesh Lady: The Diary of Catherine Ann Devereux Edmondston 1860-1866. Crabtree, Beth G and Patton, James W., (Raleigh, NC: North Carolina Division of Archives and History, 1979). http://nc-historical-publications.stores.yahoo.net/478.html

Read Full Post »

the close vicinity of the marauders at Williamston not twenty five miles off may well make us tremble #cw150

July 15, 1862

Patrick better today.  Whilst we were at tea came news that the Yankees have occupied Williamston in force, that they have arrested the magistrates at Hamilton, & hold them personally responsible for their repulse by Capt Whitaker’s Co last week.  They demand to know who fired upon them.  The cowards, to come & take peaceful unarmed men, who had nothing in the world to do with the action, & hold them responsible for the conduct of a body of regular Confederate soldiers!  Who fired upon them?  Why the Southern Confederacy, which they have come to invade, represented by a company in the 1st N C Cavalry.  Who fired upon them?  What a question, when you came here to be fired upon?  Ah! the rascals.  They are uncomfortably near us tho, and I trust that the Government will send troops down to keep them in check.

A Steamer has got in from Liverpool & brings as a present from the Liverpool merchants to the Confederate States thirteen Batteries of Light Artillery, 78 guns in all, Rifles, carriage, harness, & every thing complete—a magnificent present and one for which Liverpool has my warmest thanks.  we will not forget her when trade opens  & Liverpool shall have the precedence of all other goods in my estimation.  The first real act of kindness which we have received from any nation in the world.

Johnson has thrown into the Pententiary at Nashville all the clergyman of what denomination soever who refuse to take the oath and to pray for the President of the U S.  Where is your boasted liberty, your boasted Religious freedom, when a man cannot even pray as he wishes but must stain his soul with a lying lip prayer?  Truly, he tries to make us realize one of the curses in the Psalms—“their prayers were turned into sin.”

Vicksburg holds out gallantly & there are rumours that in Arkansas we have captured Curtis and 5,000 men, but it wants confirmation.  Major Gen Liar Halleck, as the English papers call him, claims a victory for the Feds at Richmond, says Richmond has fallen & that 15,000 Confederates are captured.  Shame where is thy blush?  Indeed, the Northern Journals generally claim that McClellan has only changed front and in fact made a magnificent strategic movement & that too in the face of an enemy, that he is nearer Richmond than he was at the commencement of the Battle.  Truth surely has left this earth.

As I walk in the garden this morning and look at my young Pear trees bending with fruit, Patrick’s prophecy about the Yankees being here before they ripened fruit, uttered when he planted them two years since, comes over me like a chill.  True, Doyenne d Ete has done its best to falsify his Cassandra-like anticipations, but the Vicar of Waikfield & Bon Chetien look as tho months of sun were needed to soften them and the close vicinity of the marauders at Williamston not twenty five miles off may well make us tremble, but God knows best and He will direct everything in His own way.

Source: Edmondston, Catherine Ann Devereux, 1823-1875, Journal of a Secesh Lady: The Diary of Catherine Ann Devereux Edmondston 1860-1866. Crabtree, Beth G and Patton, James W., (Raleigh, NC: North Carolina Division of Archives and History, 1979). http://nc-historical-publications.stores.yahoo.net/478.html

Read Full Post »

an amount of human suffering difficult to conceive of… a picture of War from which one turns appalled! #cw150

July 13, 1862

Sunday—Yesterday came home Patrick & to my great sorrow quite sick.  He gives a most moving account of the suffering in Richmond.  He says it is fearful—the hot weather, the crowded Hospitals, the stench, the want of attendance, the filthy muddy James River water, tepid at that, the actual want of proper food—altogether make an amount of human suffering difficult to conceive of  & then add to that the desolation of heart, the anguish endured by those who have lost friends, or have them suffering unable to alleviate their pain, and it makes a picture of War from which one turns appalled!  Twice since he has been gone did he see ladies going on to nurse their husbands, one of whom heard of the death of hers in the Cars & the other saw a Coffin marked with the name of hers carried past her as she sat by the window!  My God!  I thank Thee that thou has saved me this suffering, this anguish!

The Secretary directed him to reduce his Business to writing & lay it before him, saying he could not remember all the cases brought before him & must have time to consider and recollect.  So the matter is no nearer settled now than it was when he went & he has had his journey & consequent sickness for nothing.  All night & today he has a scorching fever and I feel uneasy about him.

About eleven came Jacob Higgs bringing news that there is a Regt of Yankees at Plymouth and ten Gunboats.  He is in a terrible “swivet” (mem look out that word & see whether it be slang or not) for fear that his Cotton will be burned.  I do not believe the news, & am thus saved much distress & anxiety.

Brother came to dinner, if possible more despondant than ever.  I would not have such a disposition to look on the dark side for millions, for I never could enjoy them & therefore would be better off without them.  Mary & her children left us today.  She takes the boys to school & goes herself to spend the summer in Clarksville near them.  Children are blessings I suppose.  I know that they are sore trials and a great trouble & anxiety.  “Sour grapes” perhaps, Mrs E, but who want grapes at all?

Mr E brought us a map picked up on the battlefield.  I wish it could tell its tale!  It is on an Extra Herald & is a map of the South Western States & of the seat of the War about Corinth.  True it might say with the “Knife Grinder”

“Story!?  God bless you!

I’ve none to tell.”

but I would like to hear even that.

Jackson’s Division have marched North, it is supposed to invade Maryland.  Vicksburg holds out nobly, but the enemy have seized 250 negroes & put them to work digging a canal which they intend to make so large that they can pass their ships through it & thus avoid Vicksburg altogether, make an island of it as it were.  Matters look well for us in Arkansas, & Missouri is preparing to rise.

 

Source: Edmondston, Catherine Ann Devereux, 1823-1875, Journal of a Secesh Lady: The Diary of Catherine Ann Devereux Edmondston 1860-1866. Crabtree, Beth G and Patton, James W., (Raleigh, NC: North Carolina Division of Archives and History, 1979). http://nc-historical-publications.stores.yahoo.net/478.html

Read Full Post »